Everyone loves rain. Being born and brought up in Kerala, the rains assumed a huge role in my life (and still does)
Onam, our biggest celebration is often a drain drenched affair; I have photos of my cousins and I setting the flower carpet, carefully shielded by an umbrella held by a doting uncle. What’s about the rains that touches and stirs our soul so much? What about it? I do not know…My heart pounds and literally jumps out when I hear someone say” looks like it might rain,” I love the way she comes – sometimes like a raging bull, deposing everything on way and sometimes like a lover’s caress – gentle and so full of love. Like everyone, I love the smells, the muddy puddles, the water snaking down the window panes, the soft drumming on the roofs…pitter..patter.
Perhaps, rains remind us of our childhood – the wild and wanton days when we had our grand parent’s love that warmed our hearts. Even today, I hear my grand mom’s soft call for me, when it rains. I smell the crisp freshly washed scent of her Mundu, her eyes, so full of love for me…I remember the bananas my grandfather brings for us, the children, I remember my cousins who grew up too fast, I remember the cold and dark rooms of my ancestral home…memories…As I write this, my sister lay under the shiver of a fever. A rain would have taken care of her, like no one would…Two months back, I was pulled out of my sleep with a sob at the other end of my phone, It was my sister, all she wanted to know was that “ Damu, when will it rain here.” I consoled her “soon baby, soon…I wanted it badly as she wanted”. I wish it rains everyday, at every part of the Earth…that way we will all be sharing something so beautiful at the same moment of our lives. Wishful? Yea…Stupid? May be…
Once, I chased the rains, all the way from Madivala to Sarjapur. By the time I reached Sarjapur, she decided to play a sport and took to hiding. I cried all the way back home, silently. I reversed my plan to call my daughter “Rain” as protest. I was angry. And then, in a minute…it started to rain, oblong cooling drops in my eyes, wiping away my tears. Needle knocks everywhere. She was here, and she drenched me in her love…I reveled. I sang with her and then I heard…my grandma’s soft call for me….
P.S / I lovvvvve Jim but I will never wait for the sun.
